Although Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis played with Count Basie’s band for two stretches in the 1950s, his own recordings in that decade were exclusively with his organ trios. But the passion of Davis’s tenor saxophone took on even more authority and swagger in a big band setting, so in 1960 producer Esmond Edwards hired a bandful of New York’s best players and engaged the practically unknown arranger Oliver Nelson to craft charts for Davis. The result was this powerful album. Among Nelson’s three blues compositions is "The Stolen Moment," which later, with a slight title change, became his best-known piece, "Stolen Moments." In addition to some of Jaws’s best playing and Nelson’s rich arrangements, there is the excitement of all-out trumpet competition between Clark Terry and Richard Williams on "Whole Nelson" and "Jaws."